My Bloody Memory
by Fuzzycat901
Summary: The mark they branded into me stings like fire but when I look up into Charlie's eyes, everything is fine, everything is safe. I didn't want to join the Militia but they made me. They dragged me out with blood pouring down my face and a stab to the back. My nephew is the reason I have to get back, and Charlie and her brother Danny are going to help me that is if they don't kill me.
1. Chapter 1

I've been told my past is shady, like a long black shadow that doesn't go away. I was three years old when the lights went out, and even then I hardly knew where or who I was. When the lights went out, so did a lot of people's lives. My father carried me out of the house in his arms that were already soaked with the dark red liquid called blood. A bus had crashed off of the freeway and into our house, pushing a dresser into Dad. He survived but just barely. Remembering back I should have been more worried about the blood and the bruises that showed on his face but I wasn't, I didn't even cry. They said I was strong that way but I thought it was worrisome that I didn't even speak at the sight of my neighbours, lying face down on the pavement with two bullet holes in their backs.

The world went insane that night, and so did everyone else. Everyone lost their minds, their friends, and their families. Twitter wasn't working so teenagers started to pace back and forth, wondering what they were going to do now that they couldn't see what their favourite celebrity was doing every five minutes of the day. My older sister was like that, she was sixteen when the lights went out and I remember her getting into an argument with Dad over her cell phone, but Dad yelled at her and she yelled back. That was when I started to cry.

We moved out of the city and into the forest with next to nothing on our backs. We had our clothes and some granola bars that Dad had quickly shoved in our pockets. It was weird though, how Dad never questioned why the power went out like everyone else did. He simply grabbed Jane and I and left, never looking back again.

"Eliza?" Jane whispered my name softly to me the first night. Dad had found a mossy area for us to sleep while he stayed awake, looking for anyone who tried to come across our path. Jane still clutched onto her cell phone, hoping that it would turn on and she would be in touch again with her best friends. She pushed a strand of blonde hair out of my eyes and wiped Dad's blood off of my forehead.

"What do you think will happen to us?"

As a three year old, I don't think I understood what she was asking me. I'm not sure that I spoke that much English back then. I don't remembering much after that, just a few fights Jane had with Dad. We ended up back home in the end, in the city where we first evacuated. Jane is now thirty one, still unmarried but has a kid of her own, Lukas, who gets in the way of my work around the city at any chance he can get. We're all just thankful that Canada didn't end up like the United States. Even though we are neighbours, we didn't get the same leader or the same system.

"Eliza?"

I shut my journal and shove it into the drawer of the mahogany desk. The picture frame above my head rattles and threatens to fall down on top of me but it never happens.

"Can you please come here a moment? I'm going out front and I need someone to watch Lukas."

"I'm coming!" I call back, still unaware that my window is open in my room. I quickly and quietly shut it but I don't dare look out it just in case some Snatchers are outside, waiting to break down the door to kidnap me and sell me to the US as part of the Militia. I walk down the stairs as quickly as I can and luckily I avoid my sister by about ten seconds. The door slams before I can get a chance to say 'goodbye'. Lukas is sitting on the old rug -my Grandmother gave us many years ago before I was even born- playing with his hand made toys from the market. He trots a wooden horse around the circumference of the carpet, whinnying as he goes.

"Hey, Lukas, what are you doing?"

"Waiting for Mommy to get home."

"Would you like to play with me?"

Lukas thinks about this and runs a hand through his sandy blonde hair. He's six years old tomorrow and not a day goes by where he doesn't remind me of his father, tall and muscular with the bright blue eyes. I'm not saying I was involved with him, but I will say he was a good kisser.

"Sure," he hands me another horse from his plastic bin full of toys and points to the other side of the carpet. "That can be his stable, and the carpet can be his field."

I crawl over to the other end of the carpet and lay down flat on my stomach. Outside, the chatter of old drunken men waft through the thin windows and walls. Dad owns the local bar next door with some of our neighbours who survived the horrible incident back home fifteen years ago. We don't live in that neighbourhood anymore, not since we found out that it is one of the headquarters for the Snatchers. Nobody knows why they chose that neighbourhood, I guess they thought it was one that people weren't likely to go back to. Besides, being in the city is way safer than being in a small town or neighbourhood; the Snatchers are less likely to capture you in large crowds.

"I told you, Gage, if you ever step foot across this threshold again I'm going to have to yell for security!" I can hear my Dad saying to Gage, a middle aged man who never pays Dad for his drinks.

"But she left me again... swore this time she was never coming back... please Lance... you got to give me a chance!"

"A chance to do what? Drown yourself in alcohol until your world spins and you can't remember her name?"

"Lance! Don't you ever talk about my wife that way!"

"She's gone Gage, never coming back. So accept it and get the hell off of my property."

I listen as Gage stumbles down the steps and makes it onto the pavement below, crashing into the pottery wagon at the bottom of the wooden stairs. The lady yells at him until I can hear security drag him away in their donkey cart.

"Eliza?" My sister walks in the door, red in the face and her chest rising up and down heavily. I rush to shut the door and dead bolt it behind her.

"Jane, what the hell are you doing? You can't just walk into the house and not lock the door behind you! What if a Snatcher saw and walked in!"

Jane turns to me, her face puffing with exhaustion from running up the long steps to our home. "That was the Snatchers. It wasn't security who took Gage."

My heart quickens and my face drains of its colour. I run over to Lukas and grab him, hoisting him up onto one hip. He wraps his arms around my neck and bashes his toy horse into my head.

"Auntie Eliza, put me down!" He whines, still hitting me in the head with the horse.

"We have get out of here, we have to run up north somewhere... maybe Alaska this time." She's rummaging in the kitchen, grabbing the fruit and the bread that we bought just this week at the market place.

"Jane, we can't just leave right now! What about Dad?"

"He'll meet us there."

"How will he know to look for us in Alaska? Are we just going to leave a note?"

Jane shrugs her shoulders and grabs a pot from the bottom drawer. "We'll get the message through to him somehow."

Lukas starts to cry in my arms as he drops the horse from his tiny hands and onto the floor. "It's okay little guy, nothings going to hurt you." I start to rock him up and down but that just makes him cry even more.

"Jane! This is ridiculous! The Snatchers can't just be here one moment and then you're fine and calm the next."

"He stopped by again," Jane says, standing up to her full height of five foot eight. The red in her face has faded by now and a long shadowy glare has taken her place. "He stopped by Dad's bar to chat with Dad."

"Who?"

"Dammit Eliza! Don't you ever listen? Lukas's father, Ray, stopped by to see us! We have to leave now!"

I clutch on tighter to Lukas and bite my lower lip. "Jane, I'm not leaving Dad."

Jane smirks, holding a knife in her hands. She slowly slips it into her cloth backpack and walks over to me slowly but with confidence in her step. "You don't have a choice Eliza, you're coming with me, I need you, you're my sister."

"I don't take orders from anyone Jane, you know that."

Jane sighs and stops walking, her eyes fixated on Lukas. "Do you want to see your father, Luke?"

Lukas shakes his head, his long hair whipping into my face.

"He's just like you, Jane, stubborn with passion."

Jane turns her back to me and mumbles something. Sometimes I pray that the Snatchers will take my sister.

**_Please review and tell me what you think! This isn't like the normal Revolution, but don't worry, the characters will be in here too!_**


	2. Chapter 2

It's been two days since my sister's lie. Two days of agony, pain, and sweat in our city. More and more people are heading out, looking for a better place to go. Some are even moving to smaller towns, towns that are far away even the Snatchers won't go there. Most people are moving up north to Alaska, where things are safe. Dad still works in the bar from day until night, serving people passing through and the locals who plan on staying. Dad hasn't mentioned anything to us, so I guess we're staying.

I tighten the one strap on my backpack and sling it over my shoulder. I wince as it lands on the hard surface of my purple bruise I got yesterday from being hit by a horse carriage. My Mom used to be an equestrian. She used to show jump for a living and that's how she put food on the table for us. Dad never agreed with it, being an accountant he never agreed with a lot of things.

I head out the door and down the long wooden steps and onto the cobblestone streets. In this city, you have to keep moving. Never under any circumstances do you walk or do you look back. You look straight, left, and right. Looking back could get you killed. Every so often, Monroe's Militia does march through here but when that happens everyone shuts their doors and locks their windows. They only capture a few, the few who are left to die on the streets or have nothing left to live for. It's a death sentence, being submitted to the Monroe army.

I weave my body in between parked cars and horse drawn buggies, making sure to stay away from the big wooden wheel that would turn any second. My bruise was the result of making the mistake to catch a breath against those wheels. Brick walls are safer. Around me, people shout and scream, begging for food or water. Some little kids go around with their even younger siblings, begging for money or anything that could help their rumbling stomachs. Some days, I'll give them a toonie or a loonie so they could buy themselves dinner but, not today. Dad doesn't make a lot of money off of the bar, but he does make some. Jane works as a waitress, serving the bottles to the men who sit on the rusty balcony or in the interior of the bar; some men hate the bar counter.

Out of nowhere, a bicycle whistle sounds and I instantly jump out of the way in fear of getting hit. The boy on the bike wheels past me, yelling at me as he goes. He has a loaf of bread tucked tightly under one arm, and I don't blame him for moving fast on the street. Dad doesn't know about the job I took up about a year ago. I'm surprised I've been able to keep it from him that long; telling a lie was never my specialty. Jane knows though, and she approves.

"Watch it!" A man galloping down the road on a horse yells before bending down from his saddle and pushing me backwards into a wagon of dung. My jeans sink into the wet gooey muck and the smell starts to sink in too. I yank my backpack out first and throw it onto the street. I then push myself up with all of my strength and force myself to land on my hands and knees on the road. Even though the people here are Canadian, I can testify that most of them are not polite. I grab my bag and continue to run, horse dung and all.

My job is at the old bookstore down the road except, most people don't come there for books. Since the blackout, the store owner has went to selling something a little more pricey than books; weapons. We make every kind of weapon you can think of for anyone who has enough money to buy them. But, they don't come cheap. The bookstore is hidden in a back alleyway and a little wooden sign hangs from the brick wall above. It's hidden in plain sight, but you have to look really hard to see it.

I push open the door and I'm instantly greeted by the sound of silence and the smell of hot dogs. The shelves loom over my head, displaying cases of knives, rifles, axes, and maces. I brush my hand against the cracked glass cases, careful not to push too hard.

"Eliza? Is that you I smell?" My boss, Jerry barks from the back of the store where the smell of the wiener roasting is coming from. Every morning Jerry lights a fire in the small stove to warm up the building; I guess he just can't help roasting his breakfast too.

"Morning Jerry," I shove my backpack behind the counter. "I had an accident with a wagon of horse shit."

Jerry grunts. "We've all made that mistake Eliza. Would you like a wiener? Fresh from the fire."

"No I'm good, I already ate." My stomach rumbles as if to protest.

"Right, Jane's cooking gotten any better?"

"Let's just say peanut butter for breakfast, lunch, and dinner doesn't sound very appetizing anymore."

Jerry emerges from behind the store with a burnt wiener in his hand. He chews loudly and grinds his teeth together as he goes. He already has a bit of charred meat in his snow white beard but I just smile at the old man who has given me money to clothe and feed my family for a year.

"I don't think it's her cooking that's the problem, I think it's her lack of shopping experience."

"Well, she had Mom for sixteen years, you would think she would've learned how to shop by now."

"Don't talk about your mother that way Eliza. You know she didn't intend to leave your family like that."

I bite my lower lip and slap a price tag on a hunting knife. "Drug overdoses were very common back then I know."

Jerry nods his head and leaves me alone. We've had this conversation before and I don't like to talk about it; knowing what happened to my mother isn't the worst part of it. It's knowing the details of how it happened. I was there, when she hit the ground. I was there when blood trickled out of her mouth and onto the hardwood floor. I was there for it all.

The door opens and I can hear the heavy thud of hunting boots against the stone cold floor. Jerry nods to me telling me that he has this customer. I continue to take the hunting knives out of the display case and stick the prices on them. The customer breathes heavy, as if he was running. Of course he was running, this is the city.

"Can I help you?" Jerry's voice says from behind a stack of axes.

"Yes," the voice replies but I'm taken aback when the voice is much higher pitched than I expected. "I'm looking for a rifle, one that will shoot from a long distance." The female voice says to him, slowly but surely. She has a thick accent and it sounds as if she is chewing when she ends a sentence.

"Okay, we have many guns over here, can I show..." Jerry's cough interrupts his sentence and at first I think it's just the cold that has always beaten him most days but then I hear another noise, a choking noise that my mother endured in her final moments. In a moment of pure adrenaline, I hop over the counter, still holding the knife I was pricing in my hand. I make my way past the maces and into the section of axes where Jerry lies with his face towards the ceiling, blood gushing out of his plump body.

A woman, not much older than forty stands over top of his body with a knife in her hand. It's not like the hunting knife I'm holding but it's strong and has a sharp blade on the end. She brushes back her jet black hair and starts to tie a rope around Jerry's feet. I clear my throat and she jumps a foot in the air but lands perfectly on the floor.

"Who the hell are you?" I growl, pointing my knife at her.

The woman pauses, cocking her head to one side and then to the other. She's clearly mad, gone insane. She clutches the knife tighter in her hand until her knuckles turn as white as Jerry's beard, a beard now soaked in blood.

"I'm Delilah, who the hell are you?"

"None of your damn business."

"Well, None Of Your Damn Business, I suggest that you just back off before I put this blade in your throat too." She continues to wrap his ankles and tie it in a tight knot. I take a step closer but instantly regret it when I do. Delilah jumps at me and before I get a chance to react I'm pinned to the ground with her bloody knife against my throat.

I open my mouth to speak but nothing comes out. She's blocking my windpipe and it's getting harder and harder to breathe by the second. I glance over and on her wrist I see the mark of the Militia, branded into her arm as clear as day.

"Get off." I choke.

"Not a million years sweetie. I was sent to do a job, and to do a job I will."

She digs the knife deeper into my throat until I can feel the blood trickle from my skin and down onto my clothes. That's when she's thrown off of me with great force and she screams so loudly it makes my ears ring. When I look up, I see Ray standing in the doorway with a rifle in his hands. He smiles and then disappears from sight. I may not be the friendliest girl in the world, but I know a cold person when I see one.


	3. Chapter 3

They say that if you can't tame a horse, you have to break it. Beat it down until it has nothing but its body left and a mind to carry on its long lost name. That's what my Mom told me when I was little, and I remember it. There are only a few things I remember my mother saying to me but this is one I remember because when she put me on top of her big black stallion, I was free from any harm, anytime and anywhere.

Delilah isn't dead. She lies on the floor, her chest rising up and down heavily with blood pouring out of her shoulder. Ray missed her by five inches and part of me is glad but the other half of me is dreading the moment when she wakes up. I've already taken her knife from her hand and put it into my pocket. Should I leave her here with all of the weapons or should I risk walking out into the street in pure daylight to drag her body to the outskirts of the city? If she wakes up and I'm not here; she'll steal the weapons in the store and then come after me, hunt me down and kill me. I could finish her off, I have enough weapons to do so but, should I? My Dad always said I have too much of a conscience to do it.

Delilah starts to groan and her arms begin to twitch slightly. When she lifts her head to look at me, I panic and knock her back down with the back of a rifle. Her head slumps down onto the ground with another bang. After five seconds, I can see her still breathing. I can hear my heart pounding in my chest and my blood running hot in my veins. Without thinking, I get up and run out the door. When it comes to crossing the street, I don't look. When I make it to the other side I don't see the biker and collide with him. He lands on top of me and his bike down in the ditch.

"You little bitch!" He yells, picking himself up off of the pavement and running to his bike. Long after he's hopped on his bike and rode off with the gears squeaking I still lie on the pavement, crying into the dirty ground. The people around me, they're too busy to even look my way or to wonder why the girl on the street is bleeding from her mouth or why she's crying. I'm not crying because of the guy on the bike, I'm crying because I'm not emotionally ready. I'm not ready for what the real world spits out at me. I'm not ready for anything. So I lie here, crying through my own blood and tears I don't even notice the warm hands that pick me up and cradle me in their arms.

"Eliza, what happened?" My father whispers and I can tell from the edge in his voice he's ready to go hunt down the bastard who did this to me.

"I'm fine Dad." I'm struggling to keep my eyes open, sweat is pouring down my face and a sharp shooting pain is crawling its way up my arm one step at a time. I try to lift it but just end up shouting in pain. Dad gets up off the ground and he starts to walk back the way he came with me silently lying in his arms. Out of the corner of my fluttering eyelids I think I see Delilah, with her left hand over her right shoulder, putting pressure on her bleeding room. My heart rate quickens and I gasp again which makes Dad walk a little faster.

"Dad..." I whisper, trying to get his attention.

"It's okay Eliza, you'll be alright."

"No... it's not..." Blood is pooling out of my mouth now making it extremely hard to talk. By the time I get the words in my head to say what I want to say, we have lost Delilah in the crowd but I still get the feeling that someone is following me, watching my every move.

...

"Eliza," a soft hand is rocking my shoulder very gently. It feels nice actually, kind of like a little mini massage. "Wake up Eliza." There it is again, that soothing voice that makes my nerves relax and make me want to drift back into a nice deep sleep.

"ELIZA WAKE UP!"

I bolt upright in my bed and throw back the covers in a panic. Jane sits in the rocking chair next to my bed with Lukas in her lap. He plays with the same old wooden horse that he's had for as long as I can remember. A smile is present on Jane's face but it isn't the nice kind, it's the 'I know what you were up to' kind.

"What do you want?" I snap back, rubbing my jaw after I speak.

"You cracked it," Jane puts Lukas down on the floor and moves over to sit on the bed with me. A bloody cloth sits in a bowl full of water on my night side table but my little black journal is next to it, cracked open ever so slightly. I can feel the blood rush to my head as I think of the dreaded though of someone breaking into my room. I did not place that journal there two days ago.

"Jane did you... look in my journal?"

Jane looks at the journal and then back to me, her eyebrows raised. "I didn't touch it E."

E. My sister's funny little nickname for me. She used to call me it when I was younger but after Lukas was born I wasn't the baby in the family anymore. Whenever she's serious or telling me something important, she calls me E.

"Are you sure?" I ask just to be sure. Lukas neighs on the floor, dropping his horse so loud it rings in my ears. I feel around my cut on my throat where Delilah dug her sharp knife into. I have at least five stitches, stitches that Jane bought at the medical supplies store down the road and then stitched them into my throat when I was sleeping. Looking out the window, it's pure black and chilly. I wonder how long I was out for, maybe ten hours at least?

"I'm positive. By the way, Dad wants to know what happened."

I shrug. "I got hit."

"By what?"

"A bike."

Jane rolls her eyes and slaps her palm to her forehead. "You didn't look when you crossed did you? Eliza I thought we've had this conversation many time before! Even Lukas looks when we cross the street!"

"I guess I just wasn't thinking."

Jane tilts her head to one side and sighs. "There's something you aren't telling me. Did you have a fight with Jerry?"

Tears well up in my eyes when I think of Jerry, alone and cold probably still lying on the floor back in the shop. Then I think of Delilah and her pitch black hair that could be seen from a mile away. She's still out there, somewhere and I know she's going to come get me. Like she said, she has a job to do and she's going to see it done. And I have a feeling that her job involves me being dead. I'm the daughter of an ex drug dealer and a bartender. Who the hell would want me dead and why?


	4. Snatched

"Eliza can you please get the lemons from the back?"

"Why? Who puts lemons in their alcohol?"

"Just do as I say!" Dad growls as he dump a cool bucket of water in the sink from the well in our backyard. The Police found Jerry's body yesterday in the back of the shop, sprawled across the back table as if he had fallen asleep there. They found a blood trail leading from his place of death and to the back room and after they identified who he was, a 'lovely' old woman across the road said that she had witnessed me running out of the store in a hurry and of course, she also saw my humiliating experience with the biker.

They stopped by our house and asked me a few questions. The first question was 'Why did you kill Jerry Martin'. The second question was 'What made you kill Jerry Martin." And the third question was 'What did you have for breakfast that morning because you sure are strong to drag Jerry Martin's body and haul him up on a table.'. I pleaded I wasn't guilty and for some reason, they nodded and left shortly after. But one of them, the tall muscular one was chatting up Jane for quite a while on the porch after.

Jane and I had to tell Dad my secret of me working in the weapons shop and to this very day, twenty four hours later, he's not very pleased with what I had hid from him. I push open the back door and inhale the powerful smell of alcohol and dust; something that is always here no matter how hard you clean and bleach the place. The carton of lemons sits underneath the back window, their yellow coating shining against the sunlight that streams in. I walk as fast as I can towards the box, humming a little tune to myself to keep from having a panic attack. I hate being in the backroom, it smells, it feels dark even when it's light out, and you could easily break in.

_CRASH! _

The sound of bottles breaking sounds from behind me and I instantly whip around with my heart pounding in my ears.

"Who's there?" I yell, craning my neck around the rows and rows of alcohol, trying to see just who could be lurking around the corner of Dad's backroom.

_CRASH!_

This time I take a step closer, and just as I do all I can think about is: a step closer to my possible demise. Carefully I tip toe over to where the sound came from, searching in my pockets for any kind of weapon I could use to defend myself. Nothing. Great, I have nothing! I look around and spot an old wine bottle. A bottle so old that the label is printed out by a computer! I could smash it against a crate and defend myself with the green shards of it but if it was nothing serious and just a few bottles exploding from the heat, Dad would be pissed.

I decide to skip the computer labeled wine bottle and dive right into the action. My legs sprint behind the first row of alcohol but nothing to be seen or heard. I run to the second row and gasp when I see the sight of my little nephew knocking over old beer bottle with his hand.

"Lukas!" I snap, slapping my hand down on one of the tall crates filled with bananas. "What are you doing in the backroom?"

"Mommy told me to come here." Lukas runs to me his eyes filled with tears. He wraps his arms around my waist and buries his head in my stomach, sobbing wildly.

"Did she also tell you to break Dad's bottles?"

Lukas shakes his head. "No, she told me to come get you."

"Come get me? I left her an hour ago and she was reading a book on the couch. Why didn't she just come get me herself?"

"Because," Lukas pulls away from me "Mommy's bleeding."

Lukas goes to hug me again but I shove him away before he can get the chance to touch me. He falls to the ground on his ass and starts to cry, not soft crying but loud baby wails crying. Of course, just as I'm running out the door I collide paths with Dad.

"What's going on in here?"

"Jane's in trouble!" I pant, trying to bolt around my Dad but he extends his arm out in front of me, causing it to hit me right in the ribs. The wind is knocked out of me for a moment and I'm doubled over, hands on my knees with my mouth wide open, not making a sound. "She's..." I gasp. "Snatched."

At this moment in time Dad's eyes go wide as he darts for Lukas, running to him with his arms stretched out wide. I don't look back at Dad or Lukas, I run out of the bar and up the crooked wooden steps leading to our house. When I get to the porch the door is kicked open, the rusty hinges are parted from the frame and the window at the top is smashed. The door sits diagonal across the frame making it so I have to half jump half step over it. Inside, the house is a mess. Our old lamp that hasn't been used in fifteen years is smashed into five large pieces, the light bulb in amongst those pieces of glass perfectly in tact.

Above me the floor creaks and moans and I hear a soft yelp. Jane. I stoop down and grab the light bulb by my feet even though it can do nothing to protect me. I run up the stairs skipping three steps at a time, my lungs heavy from running. A slow burn creeps up my throat and threatens to make me collapse but I know I can't, I have to get to Jane. I stumble into my bedroom, where Jane's scream is coming from. She sits in the rocking chair, her mouth and nose bleeding in a waterfall like manner and her face is bruised and swollen. The book she was reading lies open on my bed, blood smeared onto the black inked pages.

Jane makes eye contact with me and begins to scream but is silenced by a hand slamming against her cheek. That hand, that strong hand. I've seen it before, I've seen it behind a sturdy hunting knife with Jerry's blood on the blade.

"Hello, Eliza." Delilah steps out from the shadows and practically towers over me. She brushes a loose strand of hair back behind her ear and cocks her head to one side as if she's analyzing me for the second time.

"Long time no talk." I don't know why I said it, I barely know the girl but I know her well enough to know that she tried to kill me once.

She moves closer and I look down to her hand and see no visible weapon, just her powerful fists. The Militia brand on the inside of her arm still stands out, even though I've seen it on her before, this is the first time I've seen it up close on a person.

"I'm going to take your dear sister here, if that's okay with you?"

I curl my hand around the light bulb and it feels as if I am feeling power swelling up from inside it, burning the palm of my hand and creating a scar. But then I realize it's just my anger. "No, it's not okay with me."

By this time, Dad and Lukas have arrived in the doorway behind me and Dad is gasping to catch his breath; he hasn't ran that flight of stairs in a while. He sets Lukas on his feet and tells him to go play with his toys in the other room. He nods his head and does what his grandfather says.

"What are you doing here?" Dad growls at Delilah who tilts her head back and laughs a horrible laugh I wish to never hear again.

"Well, Gage, turns out your little end of the bargain didn't work."

"I've told him everything I know."

"You see, you may have told him everything _you _know but I'm pretty sure this pretty thing," she inches closer to Jane and digs her fingernails into her throat. Jane whimpers. "Knows a little more about the subject than you do."

"No, please!" Jane begs but that only earns her another slap to the face.

"Shut up! I'm talking!"

I take a step closer, my feet seeming to be the loudest thing echoing against the hardwood floor. "Please, don't hurt my sister."

Delilah looks at my Dad, then back to Jane, then back at me. She does it twice over and then laughs that horrible sinister laugh of hers. "I bet she doesn't know a thing!" Delilah backs away from Jane and paces back and forth in the little space that is provided to do so. "What if, I took Jane, delivered her to where she needed to go and also took this one," she points a finger at me. "And brought her to Monroe?"

Snatcher. Snatcher. Snatcher. Snatcher. SNATCHER!

I lunge towards Delilah, my eyes seething with anger and hatred. I tackle her to the floor but it's not use against her strong iron punch. My head falls back to the floor and I freeze there for a moment, wondering what the hell happened within those last two seconds. Delilah grabs me tightly by the arm and pulls me up to my feet.

"Second thoughts, I'll just take you." She whispers but loud enough for everyone to hear. With me imprisoned in her grip Delilah shoves me around Dad and into the wall of the hallway. Lukas screams in the other room as he watches my body fall limply to the ground. Delilah picks me up again but this time throws me halfway down the stairs. I catch myself against the banister and by the time I get to my feet Delilah has caught up with me again and has captured me, running me down the stairs and out the front door. I kick at her, I bite, I scratch, and I swear but nothing makes her grip loosen and I don't think nothing ever will.

Six men on horseback wait outside the front door, each of them wearing a Militia patch on their arms. Delilah hands me off to the leader, the front man on the horse. He grabs me by the shoulder and hauls me up onto the back of his horse. Delilah finishes it off by tying a rope around mouth and tying me to the man in front of me. She grabs the collar of my shirt and as she talks her breath smells of rotten fish and dried tomatoes.

"You're in for one wild ride, sweetie! Wave goodbye now."

She cackles as she runs to the back and leaps onto another horse. I watch as Dad, Lukas, and Jane run after us as we gallop away down the paved street. As we continue to ride off into the distance I can make out a small figure still running, trying to keep up with tears streaming down his face.

"Goodbye Lukas." I whisper, crying silently to myself as we ride on.

**_I know that wasn't that good, but I hoped you all liked it anyways! :) _**


	5. Chapter 5

I nod off sometime after sunset, when the noise of the city disappears and is replaced by the country noises; birds tweeting, night owls hooting and the rapid flaps of bats' wings as they beat through the air a hundred times per second. My head begins to knock against the man's shoulder in front of me and I try to keep my eyelids from closing, but I can't. Even though I feel myself drifting off peacefully, I can still hear the voices around me, laughing and chatting away. Maybe I'm just resting, or maybe I'm dreaming?

"So, why do we have her?" One of the men at the back whispers to Delilah.

"Because, she looks like _her."_

"I hate it when you talk in code like that."

"It's not code, it's just... never mind, you're too stupid to figure it out."

"We need information from her." The leader speaks up from deep in his chest and this makes my head snap up but then fall back down immediately; I want them to think I'm sleeping.

"Information that's hard to come across these days."

After that, we ride in silence. Beneath me I can feel the horse getting tired, his legs slowly trembling and his breathing becoming raspy and heavy as if he might collapse at any given moment. The leader stops his horse and the whole pack comes to a stop. I lift my head up slowly as if trying to register in my surroundings. We're at a lake, a small one like the one we used to live by when I was six. We moved into the interior of what was British Columbia and lived by a lake for several months. We met a lot of nice people, shared information about what we knew on the blackout (which was nothing) and shared stories and food. I didn't want to leave, but Dad said we could never stay anywhere for long. Jane didn't question it and neither did I.

"I think this is a good place to rest for the night."

Delilah quickly scrambles to the ground and unleashes me from the leader's waist. I feel as if I need to claw Delilah's face, rip the skin from her flesh and watch her bleed as she sinks to the ground on her knees. Instead, she releases the gag and punches me hard across the jaw.

"You stay quiet, or else it's lights out for you."

"You need me!" I spit at her, and this earns me another punch.

Delilah grabs a switchblade from her back pocket and holds it high above her head, ready to drive it into my chest and watch _me _bleed until I sink to the ground on my knees.

"You can't kill her." The leader pipes up and Delilah brings her knife back down and sighs.

"Rico, we can't keep everybody!"

"But we have to keep her." Rico says, his back to us as he loosens the cinch from underneath his horse's belly. Mom always said to take a saddle off of a horse when tying it up for the night, but I guess nobody told these guys this. Delilah pushes me to the ground, sending me flying back against a log. She then takes out a long piece of rope from her saddle bag just as I'm getting up to flee. She kicks me back down and wrestles me against the grassy turf until she gets me flipped onto my stomach with her knee triumphantly digging into my back. She ties the rope around my wrists and then tight around my feet so I'm bound all the way around.

"Should we put the gag back on her?" I swear I can see Delilah's eyes twinkle as she says it.

Rico shakes his head, walking over towards us now. "They should be here in any day with Ben, when he gets here she'll be quiet."

Ben, who's Ben and why will he make me be quiet?

"Monroe sent Neville out for him right?" Delilah asks, taking her eyes off of me for a spilt second and taking the time to brush the dirt off of her pants.

Rico nods. "About a month ago, before we both left I told him that we'd meet here," Rico pauses. "I also told him that I'd have Jane Huntington not her little sister who knows nothing about the fricking subject what so ever!"

"I'm sorry! I panicked! I was up against Gage! Do you know what he did to my face last time?" Delilah lefts up her deadly jet black hair and reveals a pink raised scar running from the base of her head down to the top of her shoulder.

Rico sighs and puts a hand on her shoulder. She tenses and looks down at the hand. "You weren't my first choice to be paired with me on this mission, I just thought I'd let you know that." Rico turns and walks away, barking orders at five men to set up the tent and a campfire.

I watch as Delilah's lip starts to tremble and her eyes start to water but only for a moment. As quickly as that moment came it's taken away and her lip and her eyes are back to normal, looking happier than ever. A half smile is spread slyly upon her face.

"Stay here," she takes another long piece of rope from her saddle bag and ties it around my waist then around a sturdy branch on the log. "We can't have you escaping on us."

I spend the rest of the night alone, looking over my shoulder every now and then expecting to see my father, racing through the forest with a rifle in his hand, shooting all of the Militia men and Delilah on the spot. I picture him wrapping me up in a blanket and dabbing a clean tissue on the blood streaked across my lips and the corners of my mouth. I also imagine Jane putting cold water from the well in an old plastic Ziploc bag- that we reuse- and resting it against my swollen jaw.

It isn't until when warm light dances across my face and I feel my face going red, I realize that I had fallen asleep, I was dreaming all of it. My father, Jane and the cool Ziploc bag. I feel ashamed, embarrassed, even though nobody will ever find out about it. When Delilah kicks me hard on my knee I gasp, but then I hold my tongue when she starts to laugh that horrible evil cackle.

"Rise and shine my love, today is a big day ahead of us!" She cuts the rope from around my waist with her switchblade and drags me to my feet, her iron grip locked on me once again.

"Look! Look!" One of the men shouts, pointing at a man galloping on white mare over to where we stand. In front of me Rico pulls a gleaming silver sword out of his sheath, the metal glimmering off of the sunlight. As the man gallops closer we can all see he has the Militia band secured tightly around his shoulder and I can see the tenseness in the men ease. Even Delilah had her hand on her pistol, ready to fire at any given moment.

"I come from Tom Neville's mission, we were attacked in Ben Mattheson's village. Not far from here."

Rico steps closer to this man, looking around before he speaks. "What the hell happened?" He whispers but just loud enough for me to hear from behind him.

The man gulps, shaking his head nervously. "Ben Mattheson, is dead."

Rico kicks the dirt.

"His son Danny pulled out a crossbow on us, one of our best shooters pulled the trigger while father and son were having their moment."

"How many of you are left?"

"Six or eight, a lot of the village folk got to some of our men. The shooter is dead. We couldn't take Ben, so we took Danny."

"What about Neville?" Rico doesn't seemed phased by the fact that they no longer have the man that they needed, he's more worried about Tom Neville. Why is this guy so important?

"He's fine."

"Oh, good!" Rico says a little too thrilled. With his sword still drawn he drives it into the man's stomach and doesn't take it out until the man falls on his face, still twitching on the ground. "Now," he says, turning around and snapping his fingers at one of the men to clean the blood off of his blade. "Dump the man's body in the lake. Neville doesn't need to know what went on here. He won't question when this man doesn't come back. He bailed on his team, he wasn't loyal to the Militia. We'll meet Neville back at Monroe headquarters where we'll meet him and Danny," he then looks at me, a dirty smile creeping across his face. "Between you and Danny we're going to have a lot of answers."


	6. Chapter 6

The trees, the lake, the dangers that could be lurking behind every tree trunk in plain sight; are not what I fear. The looming buildings of what used to be the border portal office for cars to pass under, is what terrifies me. I've never been outside of Canada's environment once, and even though my sister and my Dad have many times, they've never seen it after the blackout. There were horror stories coming from the border about a year after the blackout; Patrol officers losing it, citizens trying to take it over, people trying to destroy it. In my mind, it was a warzone never to be crossed paths with.

I can't believe before the blackout people in cars used to flash their passports, answer a few random questions, and then they were on their way, just like that. No warzone no nothing. The Canadians and the Americans, living happily in peace. I look around me and see the back of Rico and the terrifying face of Delilah and shake my head of the thought. The only people from America I know are Monroe's men, and they haven't exactly given me the greatest welcome invitation. Cars are lined up from where they were stopped the night of the blackout. As we walk by I peer in the windows, seeing if there is anything worth stealing; not that I can anyways. In most cars, the keys are still in the ignition and the seats a coated in a thick layer of dust.

There is a breathing lump in one of the cars covers in a blanket drenched in blood. For a second I think I am the only one who saw but when the unmistakable sound of a bullet piercing the thin sheet of glass and then the scream that comes after, I know that these people aren't here to play games.

"Canadian rebel." One of the men from the back shouts up to us and Rico nods his head.

"You have to watch out here, the Canadian rebels tend to hide out here, waiting to attack Monroe's men for Snatching," he glances over his shoulder to me. "We wouldn't want this pretty young thing to escape us now, would we?"

I don't look back but I can sense that the men and Delilah nod their heads, exchanging sick happy glances. I try and fight back the blurry haze of tears clouding over my vision but I bite my lip and force myself to see straight, knowing that I may look weak to them if I don't. Rico steers our horse, weaving in and out of the car line and towards the building. I can see shadows in the box, moving about and some people are yelling at each other behind the building, but it doesn't seem too serious.

"Remember, answer all of their questions and let me do the talking. They'll ask a lot of questions about her. If we're not careful, we'll get pulled over for a random check and be accused of Snatching."

"You're Monroe's men, how will you be accused or arrested for anything?"

"Monroe's only in power of America, sweetie. The border patrol agents of today, they're not too friendly to Monroe's men. Luckily we got a few men on the inside, figuring out their system and how to corrupt it for future use."

"Monroe wants to take over Canada."

"Well duh, who wouldn't want to take over North America?"

"Stop!" a guard says, rushing out of the guard hut and into our path. I can feel our horse's muscles tense beneath us and for a moment I think he is about to rear. "What is your purpose of travelling over the Canadian border?"

"We need to take this girl to Monroe, she is a recruit that we found lying in the streets pathetically, begging to be taken to a better place."

The guard checks me over and furrows his eyebrows when he sees the rope bound around my hands and my waist, attached to Rico. "If she is a recruit, why is she..." The poor man doesn't get to finish his sentence before he is punctured with a single bullet hole from Rico's swift hand. Rico turns around in his saddle as much as he can to face the rest of his crew.

"See you on the other side."

"Wait..." I say but before I can say anything more Rico kicks the sides of the horse and we're running over the cracked pavement and underneath the guard huts where men start to shoot furiously at us. I duck my head, hoping that if they don't hit me they'll hit Rico, and I can take control and steer back, back to my home. Deep down, a part of me knows I'll never see my family again but right now, a part of me still wants to cling on to that tiny bit of hope I know that could be there. Beyond the border is a thick line of trees with a beaten down and much travelled path. I can only hear few horses behind me as opposed to many, and my heart drops as I realize that a few of the men must have been shot down. I feel bad for them, they were just people after all. But then I think of Delilah and what she would look like with a hole in her chest, bleeding from her heart and onto the pavement below, lying face down forever, nobody bothering to touch her body again. I risk a look back and see the only person following us as we jump onto the pathway is Delilah, her black hair flowing behind her in the wind as she ducks underneath a tree branch and smiles, her lips tightly pushed together.

"What are you looking at, blondie?" She shouts, throwing her hair back and cackling. I fantasize that when she looks back up a tree branch will smack her in the face, knocking her backwards off her horse. But that never happens.

Rico slows our horse down to a trot and then to a slow walk, giving the horse a pat on the neck as we go. "Good boy Demetrius, good boy."

Delilah scoffs. "You know what Monroe said about naming our horses."

"I've been with him since the start of my career, I think I'm allowed to name him whatever I want."

"Why do all the horses have to be brown? It's kind of silly actually, I would really like to ride a white one."

"Shut up." Rico grits his teeth in response.

"What if there were such things as purple horses, I would love to own a purple horse. You know maybe when the power..."

Rico wheels Demetrius around and stops him right in front of Delilah, so he's looking her in the eyes. "I don't want to hear anything more from you! Like I said, you weren't my first choice."

We continue to walk on, Delilah silent and calm. Everything seems calm, actually. No hustle and bustle of the city or any noises of constant wailing for food. Nobody is bleeding, nobody is crying, nobody is screaming. I could get used to this.

"Why were they shooting at us back there? Why can't we just cross over?"

Rico chuckles. "Eliza, it's not that simple. You couldn't pass without being interrogated when the power was on, what makes you so sure that you could get away with not being interrogated when the power isn't on?"

"He has a point."

"I told you to shut up!"

We come to a break in the trees where the land slopes up to create a semi steep hill and then a cement roadway. This must be where the land meets the highway. "Where are we going exactly?"

"Philadelphia, that's where Monroe is."

I take a deep breath in, trying to accept the fact that I'm going to turn into Delilah, wear a Monroe army uniform by force and kill innocent people, maybe going back to Canada and snatching them.

_Going back to Canada._

The words seem so surreal that I don't even want to think them. I thought there would be a drastic change in weather, maybe the terrain when we stepped across the border but nope, everything is the same.

"If we travel through the night we'll get there in two days."

Two days. Three people. One victim.

This is not a road trip that I wanted to take.

**_Sorry it took me so long to update! I'll update soon! Oh, and I think Monroe's headquarters are in Philadelphia, right? Haha, I've never paid that much attention to that. _**


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